You’ve heard you are what you eat, well we believe that you are what you read. Teach a CEO presents lessons from our bookshelf on how you can improve and grow your venture. We have taken gems or nuggets from our library and provide them for CEO’s, startups, entrepreneurs and business owners.

When you’re vetting a digital agency, you are effectively interviewing them for a job. Act as if you are hiring an employee to join your staff. The interview questions might be a bit different, but the process is about the same. In a job interview, you are not just checking the candidate’s qualifications, you are also feeling out the employee to see whether they would be a good fit for your tam. The same goes for a digital agency you’re thinking about hiring. (The Buyer’s Guide to Websites)

Even with the best designed websites in the best agencies managing them, the probability of something eventually going wrong as nearly 100%. (The Buyer’s Guide to Websites)

Building a website is not an automatic process; it requires you to be an active participant with the digital agency throughout the project. Remember that there are key milestones in your project at the digital agency can’t reach until you have provided them the resources and information they need. (The Buyer’s Guide to Websites)

Leadership

It’s reasonable to say that Washington was one of those rare individuals capable of combining ”masculine” and “feminine” forms of leadership, but it’s more accurate to say he was a “Master herder,” someone capable of Performing 5 crucial leadership roles fluidly, interchangeably, as needed. (Five Roles of a Master Herder)

The most successful CEOs of the last 40 years cannot model, and quite possibly cannot even imagine, the leadership and social intelligence skills the next generation will need to thrive in this Brave New World. (Five Roles of a Master Herder)

Many companies have incorporated the practice into their culture. Apple, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, Raytheon, New Balance, Bose, and Monsanto are among those corporations offering mindfulness coaching, resulting in better employee well-being, lower levels of frustration, and improved overall work environment. Additionally, employees who’ve embraced programs exhibit lower levels of absenteeism and burnout. (Five Roles of a Master Herder)

Learning to access and balance the five roles of a master herder is difficult to do by accident. But so is learning how to read and write. The first step in this case involves recognizing that you are not a dominant, leader, nurture/companion, Sentinel, or predator,. You hold the seeds of all these roles merely by being human. Expand the vision of who you really are, support others in tapping a similar store potential, gain inspiration from the benevolent side of nature, and life itself will provide plenty of practice. (Five Roles of a Master Herder)

Fashion

Your appearance is your visual signature, the image that everyone sees; it’s your personal logo. (Look Good Now and Always)

Dressing unprofessionally is not good for business and not healthy for self-esteem either. If you dress sloppy, you feel sloppy; your work suffers and you can lose ambition. You might as well have a big old stop sign in front of your desk. I don’t want that for you. I want you to grow, build, advance, achieve. I know you can. (Look Good Now and Always)

I always suggest making an inspiration board. It helps you home your taste in fashion-minus the in your face pressure of department stores and eager for commission salespeople. Building an inspiration board develops and reveals your own unique blend of personal style. (Look Good Now and Always)

To create a sense of balance, you need to repeat the colors, texture, and contrast sheet find above the neck on the rest of the body as well. (Look Good Now and Always)

Engagement

One of the first ways for a leader to truly engage in initiate change is to rethink the entire me process. Truly amazing how most people accepted inefficacy of the way meetings are running most companies, as if the process is on alterable. (Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?)

An engaged leader has the confidence and courage to admit that everything is not working perfectly. Engagement also means hyperinquisitive-asking questions, and then asking more questions. It means redefining how you see problems. It means being comfortable with constantly creating and leading change. It means communicating well and motivating everyone to win. It means acting like an owner in every sense of the word. (Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?)

I found out one of the keys to bring it about genuine changes to keep it simple-in two specific ways. The first is about discovering the right “focus”; that is, identify the specific two to three elements most relevant to your company’s particular circumstances. Getting people to really understand that is essential in a given situation is closer to moving them to action the second area where simplification can be constructive as paring down items for which you need approval. If you unbundle request into smaller components, you can often get that approval more quickly, and much more easily. (Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?)

But while strategy is vitally important, it’s the follow-up and the execution that are really critical. In the final analysis, it all boils down to execution. What I found is that the best most successful companies know how to execute really well. They communicate, motivate, engage and just do it. (Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?)

CEO Bookshelf

The Buyer’s Guide to Websites: What You Need to Know to Get the Website of Your Dreams – If you’ve got a business, a product, a brand, or even just an idea, you need a website. In today’s digital landscape, an online presence is no longer optional. It’s essential. The Internet remains an unregulated frontier where good guys and scam artists often look very similar. Without experience and knowledge, the web can be a dangerous place. You need a guide. The Buyer’s Guide to Websites is a comprehensive tool kit for building and managing an incredible website, from agency vetting and contract creation to development oversight, design input, and digital marketing. Throughout, Drew Barton, the founder and president of an award-winning digital agency, breaks down the process of finding, hiring, and working with web developers and designers. Don’t fall prey to unqualified imposters: The Buyer’s Guide to Websites will teach you how to ask the right questions, make the right decisions, and create a website that helps you succeed online.

Five Roles of a Master Herder: A Revolutionary Model for Socially Intelligent Leadership– Linda Kohanov, author of the bestselling The Tao of Equus, pioneered a deep understanding of “the way of the horse,” including the extraordinary nonverbal communication of skilled riders and the collaborative power of “herding cultures” through the centuries. She has adapted this profound, time-tested approach to modern life and the organizations in which top-down management hierarchies have become obsolete. Detailing the five roles of “master herders” – Dominant, Leader, Sentinel, Nurturer/Companion, Predator – she shows listeners how to recognize and utilize them in the “modern tribes” of our workplaces and other social organizations. Richly nuanced and yet wonderfully practical, this model facilitates the mobility, adaptability, and innovation essential today, and allows groups to achieve goals, overcome obstacles, and sustain one another with the powerful grace exemplified by skilled horse and rider.

Look Good Now and Always: A Do-It-Yourself Style Makeover for Busy Women – Does your wardrobe make you look and feel fantastic? Not sure what’s age-appropriate or where to shop? Want to create a put-together look everyday? This step-by-step guide tells you how to choose colors, shapes and styles for polished presence to feel genuine, confident, and sensational inside and out. Hundreds of style tips, personal stories, client experiences, and industry experts contribute to help you dress for your dreams.

Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?: Transform Your Business Using the Five Principles of Engagement – As a senior executive for a major department store chain, Steve Goldstein was shocked to find snowblowers for sale at the company’s Miami store. When Goldstein asked a salesman on the floor how long this had been going on, he replied, “I’ve been here for thirty years, and we’ve been getting them since I’ve been here.” For Goldstein, this one snowblower experience crystallizes all the dysfunction he has seen in business over the course of his career. Whether it’s having snowblowers for sale in a place where it never snows or a more pervasive issue—like having so many meetings scheduled there’s no time left to actually solve any problems—dysfunction within large organizations is so prevalent that most people either accept it as an inevitable fact of corporate life or assume someone else will deal with it. But must it be this way? Goldstein’s answer to this is a resounding No! In Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami?, he explains the nature of dysfunction present in most companies and other organizations, why it occurs, and most importantly, what leaders, at all levels, can do to tackle these issues and improve performance. A seasoned business leader with more than three decades of experience, he has discovered that almost all dysfunction is caused by a lack of engagement, and that it is fixable. Goldstein outlines his unique Five Principles of Engagement and demonstrates how top-level leaders can—and should—use them to improve the way they interact with their teams, employees, and customers. He offers pragmatic, proven techniques for solving problems most leaders face: including a revolutionary time-saving meeting model; a new process for making more efficient decisions—with all participants having greater accountability; a new system that impels leaders to really know their employees and customers; and other ground-breaking tools. Inspiring, entertaining and refreshingly honest, Why Are There Snowblowers in Miami? is filled with true stories from the author’s own experience as well as anecdotes and insights culled from interviews he has conducted with some of the world’s most influential CEOs. From these real-life examples readers will learn how understanding and utilizing the Five Principles of Engagement can lead to powerful and positive change in their own organizations—and in their lives.

Gresham Harkless is a Media Consultant for Blue 16 Media and the Blogger-in-Chief for CEO Blog Nation. CEO Blog Nation is a community of blogs for entrepreneurs and business owners. Started in much the same way as most small businesses, CEO Blog Nation captures the essence of entrepreneurship by allowing entrepreneurs and business owners to have a voice. CEO Blog Nation provides news, information, events and even startup business tips for entrepreneurs, startups and business owners to succeed.

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